The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for assessing metabolic, behavioral, and physiological status of living specimens and, more particularly, to methods and systems for assessing multi-dimensional physiologic responses and effects of various environmental conditions and pharmacologically active substances on living specimens.
Various systems have been developed for assessing the physiologic, metabolic, and behavioral responses of living organisms, particularly laboratory animals, to various changes in their environment and to the introduction of pharmacologically active substances, including toxins and carcinogens, into their systems. Conventional protocols are directed to detecting changes in the metabolic, physiological, and behavioral characteristics of one or a few parameters in a living organism to the introduction of an environmental change and/or pharmacologically active substances. For example, a set of laboratory animals, such as mice or rats having known physiologic, genetic, and metabolic characteristics, are divided into at least two subsets with one subset functioning as a control group and another subset functioning as the test group. Both groups are provided with identical environments with a pharmacologically active substance introduced into the test group and one or more response parameters measured. Thereafter, a comparison of the responses between the control group and those of the test group provides a basis for assessing the effect of the introduced substance. In general, laboratory protocols of this type are adequate for providing information as to one or a few independent or dependent variables. Where a large number of interrelated variables must be evaluated on a real-time or near real-time basis, existing sensing and information gathering systems are inadequate.